Trump To Iran: Get Your S*** Together – Or Else

Did Donald Trump tell Iran to “get its s*** together”? Or is that directed at Pakistan, which keeps trying to stage Islamabad II: Taqqiya Boogaloo with a regime incapable of committing to anything?

Axios’ Barak Ravid reports this morning that Trump won’t keep J.D. Vance on the tarmac forever. The vice president had prepared to lead the American delegation in talks this past weekend, but Iran’s regime couldn’t decide whether to come and what to offer if they did. That prompted Trump to extend the ceasefire unilaterally until Iran could come up with a “unified” offer to present, mainly at Pakistan’s request rather than Iran’s. However, Trump has now warned everyone that his patience is not unlimited:

President Trump is giving Iran’s warring factions a short window to unify behind a coherent counter-offer — or the ceasefire he extended Tuesday ends, three U.S. officials tell Axios.

• “Trump is willing to give another three to five days of ceasefire to allow the Iranians to get their shit together,” one U.S. source briefed on the matter said. “It is not going to be open-ended.”

Why it matters: Trump’s negotiators believe a deal to end the war and address what’s left of Iran’s nuclear program is still achievable. But they also worry they may not have anyone in Tehran empowered to say yes.

The Iranian regime spent 47 years attempting to immanentize their peculiar, apocalyptic eschaton. That’s why the mullahs pursued nuclear weapons; they wanted an apocalypse that would produce the Kwisatz Haderach – er, excuse me, the messianic Twelfth Imam that would impose Islam on the world through their tyranny. Trump is now trying to immanentize the regime’s eschaton by forcing the cracks between its factions to produce a collapse.

The blockade alone will likely produce that eventually. If the IRGC keeps targeting ships in the Strait of Hormuz, though, Trump will have to respond asymmetrically to hasten that eschaton along. The US and other observers see the fractures widening in real time already:

U.S. officials first began to see the divisions after the first round of Islamabad talks, when it became clear IRGC commander Gen. Ahmad Vahidi and his deputies had rejected much of what Iran’s own negotiators had discussed.

• The split broke into the open last Friday. When Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the IRGC refused to implement it — and began publicly attacking him.

That much has become apparent even to the general public. The original ceasefire was supposed to include free passage through the Strait of Hormuz, which Araghchi announced – and the IRGC immediately repudiated. The regime then demanded a ceasefire in Lebanon, which Trump and Marco Rubio brokered, but reneged again on the Strait, at which point Trump imposed a blockade on Iran. There isn’t much room to trust anything Araghchi has to say in Islamabad until IRGC chief Ahmad Vahidi agrees to be bound by agreements, and he’s clearly not willing to cede any authority in such matters.

Can anyone force Vahidi into cooperating? Not anymore. The only two people who had the juice to force the IRGC into compliance went room temperature several weeks ago, Ravid points out. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei died in the first minute of the war, and Ali Larijani not long after that. Larijani’s replacement, a functionary named Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, has no real power, and even if the Nepo Babytollah is still alive, he’s a creature of Vahidi and the IRGC, not the other way around. This is an outright military junta, and one desperate to stay in power.

That itself may be the key to triggering a collapse. My friend Jim Hanson explained it on Fox News last night in an interview with Jesse Watters. The blockade is still the key, but if Vahidi wants to escalate, Trump has a lot more options than Vahidi does:

Thanks President Trump for the kind words.
The Iranian regime is broken and broke.
They can’t even pay their thugs any more.
They will either take the deal offered or they will devour themselves. pic.twitter.com/X4cg6YPzan

— Jim Hanson (@JimHansonDC) April 22, 2026

Trump clearly wants to accelerate the “devour themselves” phase of this war. That requires pressure, and open-ended ceasefires, even with total blockades, may not be enough. Deadlines increase pressure, although for that to be effective, Trump has to stick to this deadline and tell Pakistan that the extension game is over. That’s why this “get your s*** together” message probably aims more at Islamabad than it does Tehran. 

Editor’s Note: For decades, former presidents have been all talk and no action. Now, Donald Trump is eliminating the threat from Iran once and for all. 

Help us report the truth about the Trump administration’s decisive actions to keep Americans safe and bring peace to the world. Join HotAir VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership.